Page 17 of Under Pink Skies

Kameron rolled his eyes. “Eventually you’ll have to grow up.”

I slung my arm over my face, shielding my eyes.

“But adulthood sucks.”

Kameron chuckled and took another loud slurp. “That it does.”

“Do you have any farm work that needs tending? I’m itching to get out of this freaking house.”

“Sure I do. On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“Tell me about Abbie.”

All the air seemed to vanish from the room. I removed my arm from my eyes and stared up at the ceiling before meeting Kameron’s eyes.

“What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you’re willing to tell me. And let’s skip the bullshitting. I saw how you reacted when I said her name. It was a combination of terror and relief.”

My throat was sandpaper as I opened my mouth to speak.

“Abbie was my girlfriend when I lived in Watford.”

How were you supposed to describe your first love? The person who was light incarnate? A person who always stood tall in the face of life’s many distractions and downs? Girlfriend was too pallid a word to describe who Abbie was to me. Who sheisto me, even all these years later. The woman who saw me as more than the sum of my past and my introverted tendencies.

Kameron said nothing, simply fixed his eyes on me and leaned back in his gaming chair. Whatever email he’d been drafting was long forgotten.

“Her family owned the town’s general store. We met in our freshman year of high school, when my uncle moved us to Watford. She was the first person to say hi to me on my first day.”

I smiled at the memory of Abbie’s brown curls bouncing toward me, a genuine smile plastered on her face as she stuck her right hand out in greeting, offering to give me a tour.

“Watford High wasn’t a big place, but something about her energy was infectious. She felt . . . safe. On some level, I knew she wouldn’t hurt me or poke fun at me. So, I let her walk me through my schedule, introduce me to a few of my teachers, and show me where the cafeteria and bathrooms were. After that, we started hanging out more. It turned out that I excelled in math while she had exceptional talent in English, so we would exchange tutoring sessions in the evenings.”

I paused, taking in Kameron’s smile. “What?”

“You realize this is something out of a small-town romance book, right? High school sweethearts who tutor each other? Who are opposites on paper, but they just seem to work?”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

“That’s how it began. I haven’t told you how it ends.”

Kameron silently waved a hand for me to continue.

“We would always go to her house, because my Uncle Ellis was abusive, and I didn’t want Abbie anywhere near him. Ellis was a social recluse anyway, and really only came into town to buy beer and the occasional bag of groceries, but the less opportunities they had to meet, the better. By the end of our freshman year, we were dating. And by the time we’d hit the end of our junior year, we were inseparable. She was . . . she was everything. My world revolved around her.”

I took in a shaky breath, adjusting myself on the couch so that I could stare back at the ceiling for the next part of this story.

“At the beginning of our senior year, we were in her kitchen, drinking chai tea and eating freshly baked cookies. It was the beginning of fall, and autumn was Abbie’s favorite season, so we’d made everything from scratch. When her parents came in and sat opposite us at the dining room table, I thought for sure they were about to have thewhat are your intentions with our daughtertalk. Instead, her mother, Tilly, reached across the table for Abbie’s hand and told us about her cancer diagnosis. It was late-stage breast cancer. Incurable.”

I exhaled shakily, my skin crawling with the memory of Abbie’s smile faltering as she fought to comprehend her mother’s words.

“The doctors had given her a year, but based on her recent scans, Tilly was certain she had less. Abbie was beside herself. She didn’t understand why her mother wasn’t planning to fight it. Even after she saw the scans herself, talked with her mom’s doctors, and saw the reality of how bad it was with her own eyes, she couldn’t accept it.

“Tilly passed in June, the week after we graduated, a few months shy of a year after she’d received her formal diagnosis. I always thought of that as poetic in the most tragic way—that Tilly could hold on long enough to watch her only daughter walk across the stage, make that monumental transition. Her mom’s death destroyed Abbie. I assume anyone who was close with their parents would be.”

“And how do you play into all of this?”

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